


Patience

by rosecake



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Future Fic, Steve Trevor Lives, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-24 04:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: Steve died, but Diana can't make herself accept it.  And in the end, she doesn't have to.





	Patience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



The plane was so high by the time it exploded that the fallout spread across acres of land. Still, she is intent on searching every inch of it, even though Sameer tells her there's no point. She can't help herself, though. She needs to confirm with her own eyes that there is nothing left of him, nothing even to take back to his family for burial, or she won't be able to make herself believe it. So she searches for days, and in the end she finds no trace of him. 

"He's not here," says Sameer, his voice thick with grief, and Diana wonders if she's made things harder on him. On herself. She hadn't meant to, but her intentions don't seem to count for much these days. "He's gone, Diana. And if we stay out here much longer we're going to miss the funeral."

*

Their plane touches down on American soil, and as near as she can tell American cities are just as dark, noisy, and overwhelming as European ones. But they rent a car and drive for hours, and the scenery shifts as they get further from the coast, turning more pastoral. The place Steve came from is flat in every direction, soft fields filling up the landscape, green and yellow as far as the eye can see.

It is not so much a funeral as a memorial service, as there is no body to be interred. All the customs, all the ritual words, all of it is unfamiliar to her, but they sit in the back and Napi quietly explains things to her as the preacher speaks. It makes her feel less isolated, less alone. 

"I have to leave for a while," she says, and Sameer, Napi, Charlie, and Etta all end up talking over each other in protest. "I know, but I promise I'll be back."

*

It takes her a long time to find her way into the Underworld, so long she begins to think that it's an impossible task. But after seasons of searching she finds herself making her way down a stone staircase that winds its way deep into the earth. It is winter, and it was chilly on the surface, and the cold only deepens as she descends.

She remembers stories her mother told her, about the rivers of the dead and the ferryman, about the three-headed dog that guarded the gates. But she has to make her own way across the rivers, and the gates are unguarded when she comes to them. Whatever the Underworld used to be, it has changed, either due to Ares or some other cataclysm. Worry overtakes her, and she fears that when she makes it to the heart of the place there will be no one there to help her. 

Instead of nothing, though, she finds the Queen of the Underworld still sitting on her throne. 

The face of the goddess is obscured by a mourning veil draped over her face. She has a crown of withered flowers on top of it, and resting at her feet is a body wrapped in linen. When she speaks, her voice is insubstantial, more like a whisper or an echo than the voice of a goddess and queen. 

"Diana of Themyscira, what is it that brings you here?" 

Diana drops to her knee. "I am looking for someone. A man, named Steve Trevor, he died and I--" 

Persephone does not let her finish. "There is nothing here for you." 

"If I could just see him," says Diana, and she did not not come all this way to give up immediately but at the same time she cannot help but but lose hope. There isn't anything here, not for her, not for anyone. 

"Dead men remain dead, and even if that were not true, I still could not help you," says Persephone. "You are not going to find what you are looking for here, child, not now and not from me. You need to seek help from the other gods." 

"The other gods are dead, aren't they? Ares killed them." 

"For now," says Persephone. "But gods are not the same as men, and they will return." 

"I don't understand," says Diana. 

The goddess sighs, and chill passes through Diana's bones. "If you want answers, try the Fates."

*

She goes back afterwards. The others have scattered, each to their own countries, and she visits them one by one.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" ask each of them in turn, and she has to tell all of them no. 

"Are you going to keep looking?" asks Etta. 

"Yes," says Diana, "I just don't know that it'll help." 

The Fates prove to be even harder to find than the Underworld was, and Diana has heard enough stories to know that they're unlikely to be anything other than vague she does find them. Their advice is only ever helpful in hindsight. 

Still, she cannot do nothing, so she covers the Earth from continent to continent until she uncovers them. Or, perhaps, they allow themselves to be found. 

"Your time isn't here yet," they say, all three of them speaking in one voice. Diana has no idea what they are speaking about, and she doesn't really care. There is only one question on the forefront of her mind, one question that matters to her. 

"I am looking for a man named Steve Trevor," she says. "He is not among the living, and he is not among the dead, so where is he?" The explosion was just chemicals, just normal human fire. It may have destroyed his body, but it couldn't have destroyed his soul. She should be able to find it, find him. Even if just as a ghost. 

"It is not his time yet either," they say. "The time for the gods to return is coming, but it isn't here yet." 

She did not ask about the gods, and she almost says _I don't care about the gods_ , but that's not totally true. Even if it were, she would not utter blasphemy directly to the Fates' faces. 

"I am not looking for a god," she says. "I am looking for a man. I just..." and she pauses, because after all this time she's still not sure what sort of answer she wants, what she expects when she finds him. "I just want to know what happened to him." 

They put a coffin in the ground, but there was nothing in it. 

"Patience," is all they say, and then they are gone, and Diana is left alone. 

She searches for them again, on and off when she can convince a university or museum to cover the costs as part of her research, but she never finds them.

*

Decades later she hangs back with Bruce after a funeral, one that painfully reminds her of the first one she attended outside Themyscira. "I want to know more about the others," she says.

The memory of her meeting with the Fates comes to mind as she flips through the material Bruce gives her, photos of a man who can travel as fast as light, a technological marvel, some sort of soldier from a land long forgotten under the oceans. It doesn't really come together in her mind until later, though, not until they have all fought together. It doesn't make sense until she has figures out the true extent of their powers. 

"I was hit by lightning," Barry tells her, and then he goes on to explain his theories about the speedforce and time and space and she smiles and nods but in the back of her mind she thinks _Hermes, god of so many things, and speed only one of them_.

Barry breaks something without meaning to, something important to time and space itself, and she helps him put it back together. And afterwards, she asks a favor of him.

*

"I can't," says Barry. "I want to, I really do, but I can't. I mean, first of all, I've been able to skip around a decade either way, but you're talking more like a _century_ , and I messed things up so badly the last time, Diana. I don't think it works, I don't think it can work. I think when people die, I think you have to--"

He is stumbling over his words so she holds him, holds him until he's calmed down and breathing normally. 

"I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to, you realize that, right?" She's not going to push things any further if he doesn't realize that. 

"Yes," he says. 

"I don't want you to change anything," she says, even though that is exactly what she wants. So many years gone, so many people besides her who suffered at the loss of him. But some things can't be undone, and she understands that. Steve made a sacrifice, and so did everyone who loved him. She can't undo that without undoing all the good it did. "We never found a body back then, so it won't change anything if you bring him here. To the present." 

Barry's eyes light up a little at that. "Yeah, that makes sense," he says, and she can see that he's selling himself on the idea. "I mean, I still don't even know if I can go that far back, but we can always try, right?" 

"Right," she says, smiling, hope blossoming in heart even though she knows that it's premature, that's she's only setting herself up for a fall. 

"I still don't know if I can even really bring him back with me, Diana," he says, some of the optimism slipping from him as he thinks over the logistics of it. "I mean, I'll try, but--" 

"Barry," she says, stopping him from speaking further, "that's all I want from you. I'm not going to be angry with you if it doesn't work. I know the extent of what I'm asking you, and I'll always love you just for trying, even if it doesn't work." 

Some of the tension eases out of him. "Okay," he says. "Okay, let's give it a shot." 

"Thank you," she says. "And if you can't bring him back, can you just give him a message from me?" 

_Hermes, the messenger_. Maybe that's all she will get. Maybe that was all she was ever meant to get, a message delivered back through time. She needs to prepare herself for that. 

"What message?" 

She remembers the chaos of that battle, the one was supposed to be the last one and wasn't. The deafening noise, the way Steve was trying to make her understand, the way clarity didn't come until afterwards when it was too late. 

"Can you tell him I love him? Just make sure he knows that I love him."

*

She has prepared herself, again and again, for the worst, so she forgets to breath when she sees Steve. It happens so fast that to her, it's like Barry never leaves - she sees him move, sees the lightning flash, and before she has the chance to think anything at all he's back again, Steve slumped over in his arms, both of them clouded in smoke.

Steve's jacket is smoking, and she has to move fast to pull it off him by herself because Barry is too busy coughing to help with it. 

"I don't know," says Barry, gasping and trying to talk coherently around the coughing, "I had to move faster than the explosion, the fire, I don't know if he's-" 

"He's alive," she says, because Steve is coughing now too, and he looks dazed and there are burns that they're going to have to treat him for sooner rather than later, but he's gasping for air and that means that he is, for the moment, alive. 

He looks her in the eyes and opens his mouth to say something, and then he collapses. Barry helps her get him to the infirmary and she knows, logically, that he is injured and that he is not safe yet. But in hear heart, she doesn't care, because she can still hear his steady breathing and feel his heartbeat as she carries him and he is _alive_.

*

Diana watches him as he sleeps, and for the first time she worries that she may have acted selfishly. The world has changed, changed far faster and more thoroughly that she could have imagined back when she first left the island. When Steve wakes up, he will find nothing familiar but her, and who knew if she would be enough? Who knew if this was the future he wanted? In the end, though, she can't make herself regret choosing life for him.

She stays with him the whole time is his asleep, making lists in her head. Lists of all the things she wants to say. Lists of all the things she will have to explain. There is going to be so much confusion at first, and she wants to be ready for it. 

She stays with him the whole time, and so she is there waiting when he wakes up. 

"Diana?" he asks, and there is confusion as well as affection in his voice, and she has spent so much time thinking about what she needs to say and she forgets it all the second she hears him say her name. 

"I love you," she says, because she wants it to be the first thing he hears from her after she's carried it in her heart for so long. 

"I love you too, princess." 

He hasn't even looked around the room yet. He hasn't had a chance to realize how much has changed. He's going to have so many questions, and she wishes it could all wait, wishes she could linger in the euphoria before they get to the difficult part. But life isn't always easy. Still, he is alive, and they can get through anything just so long as they are both living. 

She kisses him, lets it go on longer than she should because he doesn't stop her, and then she pulls away to begin explaining.


End file.
